


right where you left me

by Oliviet



Category: Law & Order: SVU
Genre: Angst, April 1st predictions, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-28
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-19 06:22:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29746311
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Oliviet/pseuds/Oliviet
Summary: She has to be hallucinating. There’s no way that he’s real - that he’s here right now. Not now at this damn award ceremony she doesn’t even want to be at. Not after ten years of radio silence.He’s not real.Olivia turns away from where she thought she saw him. Focuses in on the program for the ceremony, pretending to read the list of other honorees tonight. But she can’t focus. She feels like she can barely breathe let alone make sense of the words in front of her.“You never know who might show up.”
Relationships: Olivia Benson/Elliot Stabler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 62





	right where you left me

**Author's Note:**

> Once upon a time I was a 16-year-old girl writing SVU fanfic instead of paying attention in math class. I stopped writing them a long time ago (I think the last SVU fic on my FF is from college), but with everything that's happening lately, I got pulled back in. I wrote this as a one shot, but I might be inspired to add on more. We'll see how the month of waiting goes.

She has to be hallucinating. There’s no way that he’s real - that he’s here right now. Not now at this damn award ceremony she doesn’t even want to be at. Not after ten years of radio silence. 

_ He’s not real. _

Olivia turns away from where she thought she saw him. Focuses in on the program for the ceremony, pretending to read the list of other honorees tonight. But she can’t focus. She feels like she can barely breathe let alone make sense of the words in front of her. 

_ “You never know who might show up.” _

She  _ hates _ that her first thoughts flashed to images of him when Fin said that. She absolutely hates herself for it. How the hell was she still holding on to this fever dream? He was gone. He wasn’t coming back. Not for the job. Not for her. 

Definitely not for her. 

So, it made no sense for him to be here now. She doesn’t know any of these other people being honored tonight, so how would he?

Ten years. It’s been ten years, so much could have happened in that time, so much  _ has  _ happened. He could have a new partner. One of these people could be him or her. 

If he’s here, if he’s  _ really _ here, he’s not here for her. You don’t just fall off the face of the earth, failing to show up even when your ex-partner’s name gets dragged through the news cycle after being attacked, only to make a reappearance at some award ceremony that doesn’t even matter. 

That’s why she tells herself she’s hallucinating. She can’t handle the thought of him being here without his reason being that he’s here to support her. And she’s embarrassed by it. Embarrassed that just the sheer thought of him still makes her feel this way. Her partnership clearly didn’t mean as much to him as his had to her. Twelve years together and she’d had it all wrong. And yet she still lets the thought of him get to her like this. 

Longest relationship she ever had. Closest thing she had to family for years. 

Just another ghost from her past. Something else to haunt her at night. 

She can’t help herself and turns back to stare at the spot where she thought she had seen him lingering. There’s no one there. Of course there isn’t. He wouldn’t be here. He stopped caring about her a long time ago. 

And maybe he had to force himself to stop, maybe he was just trying to save his marriage, and whatever that’s fine,  _ it’s fine _ . But what does it say about her that 10 years later she still catches herself looking over her shoulder for him, expecting to see him in places she shouldn’t? 

It’s gotten better. She doesn’t think about him as constantly as she used to. But she still hasn’t managed to turn it off - to move on completely. He’s a part of who she is as a person, part of who she is as a cop. She wouldn’t be here today - not as Captain of the precinct they once walked the halls of together, not receiving this award - if it wasn’t for him. 

Yet still she wonders, did she shape him the same way he shaped her?

_ I’m your partner for better or for worse.  _

Will this ever get easier? She’s been asking herself that same damn question for ten years and the answer is still no. She still misses him - their partnership, their friendship, all of their what-could-have-beens. He wasn’t  _ hers _ . She knows that. But goddamn if she didn’t feel like his when he would look at her in that way he did. He knew her inside and out, better than she knew herself. He may not have been hers, but she was utterly and completely his. 

Every cop function she’s gone to for the past ten years, she’s found herself wondering if he would be there. When she made Sergeant, Lieutenant,  _ Captain,  _ where was he? He used to climb the ranks right alongside her, he used to do  _ a lot  _ of things right alongside her, but now he’s been reduced to nothing more than a ghost she keeps chasing. A memory she tries to shove down and push away, but can never manage to keep buried for long. 

_ He’s not here, Olivia. Push these thoughts of him away again and go accept your award so you can go home to your son.  _

Her phone vibrates on the table and she flips it over to see who’s calling her. It’s Rollins. Work is going to save her from delivering any type of acceptance speech isn’t it? She’s entirely too grateful for being called in for once. 

“Benson,” she answers, slipping out of the banquet hall. 

“I, um,” Rollins stammers on the other line. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but uh, I saw something come up and thought you’d want to know. I mean I don’t know your whole history, but…”

“Rollins,” Olivia starts, shaking her head. “What is it? Just say it.”

“There was a car explosion that got called in.”

Olivia pauses, waiting for her to go on, but her silence hangs in the air. “Okay? And this is SVU how?”

“Well, it’s not. But they’re saying the car - it was registered to an Elliot Stabler. And...isn’t that your old partner?”

Her whole world drops away. She feels sick. Nauseous. Her vision blurs and she can hear her heartbeat thundering in her ears. 

No, no, please God, no.

“Liv?” Rollins prods from the other line. “You there?”

“Where?” Olivia croaks out. “Where was the explosion?”

Rollins gives her the address. It’s not in Queens. It’s in Manhattan. Has he been here this whole time? Five, maybe six, subway stops away from her apartment? This whole time. Ten years. And now - 

She spins and reaches out toward the wall for support while she dry heaves through the panic attack coursing through her. He can’t be dead. He can’t. She won’t accept this. He can be the jackass who abandoned her, but he can’t be dead. Not now. Not like this. Not with his last words to her being what they were. Last words neither of them knew would be their last ones to each other. 

She can’t do this. 

Fin’s found her now. Sees her hunched over, clutching at her sides, and chooses the moment to make some joke about her being nervous to give a speech. 

_ He doesn’t know _ .

“Elliot,” she chokes out. 

Fin stares at her confused and she realizes she still has Rollins on the line and shoves her phone in his direction. He takes it, giving her a questioning look and letting their detective fill him in. She sees the moment the realization dawns on him, the moment everything clicks into place. 

“I’ll drive,” he offers, handing her back her phone. 

She nods once, wrapping her arms around herself. Does she even want to see the scene? Does she really need more ghosts to haunt her in the night? 

But she lets Fin take her there. She’s almost amazed the cops on the scene don’t question why SVU showed up. Maybe they’ve heard of her, of him, of  _ them. _ She remembers the whispers around the office. The rumors of an affair they weren’t even having. But how would these Rookies know? All of that was another lifetime ago. These kids were probably still in grade school back then. 

Then she sees the car. Or well, the shell of one. Burnt into a crispy, twisted metal heap. She feels like the wind has been knocked out of her. No one could have survived that blaze. If he was in that car - if any of his kids were - oh god, oh - 

“Liv!”

No, no, no, no she’s hallucinating, he’s not real. That wasn’t his voice. He wouldn’t - and the nickname - after all this time -

But then she sees him. Sees him with her own two eyes and it’s a whiplash of emotions. He wasn’t in the car. He’s alive. He’s alive and he’s  _ right there _ . Ten years and he’s  _ here _ .

“Elliot.”

His name is a whisper on her tongue. Barely audible, she’s not even sure if she said it out loud. The syllables feel unfamiliar in her mouth, almost foreign. For too long he has only existed in her thoughts, her memories, her dreams. He hasn’t been real, tangible. But here’s now, he’s really here, and he’s alive. 

He wasn’t in the car. 

He’s jogging toward her now and oh god what does she do? How does she greet him? What does she say? 

_ I’m sorry your car blew up, I hope no one was hurt, why the fuck did you leave me all alone? _

Even in the dark she can see that he’s older, the extra lines etched into his face that don’t exist in her memories of him. He still looks good. Damn good. 

“Olivia.”

He says her full name this time and her eyes slip closed at the sound of it. She wishes he’d go back to her nickname - to the years it erases. Her full name drags their years apart back in. 

When she opens her eyes again he’s standing right in front of her and oh wow ten years and this man hasn’t changed his cologne. It smells like coming home. It takes everything in her not to reach for him. But they don’t do that, they’ve never done that. Only twice has she felt what it was like to be held in his arms and knew instantly exactly why they didn’t do it more often. It was dangerous territory. It threatened to be the gateway for that something more the precinct rumor-mill was constantly cooking up. He held her a little too long, squeezed her a little too tight.

He had a wife. 

“I -” she starts, looking for a reason to explain her presence here. There is too much to say and not enough minutes left in the day to get them all out. “One of my detectives, she heard about the explosion and recognized your name on the car registration. I had to - I couldn’t -”

And then he’s pulling her up against his chest and she feels ready to break into a million little pieces. She can’t, she can’t - 

“I’m glad you’re here,” he whispers into her hair. 

She hears the hiccuping sob that escapes her, prays that he didn’t. She is still so fucking pissed at him. He left her. He left her alone without a single goddamn word. He didn’t even have the balls to tell her that he was leaving himself. He never said goodbye, never reached back out. 

But he’s glad to see her and he’s holding her and she never thought she would ever see him again. 

She lets him hold her. Allows herself these couple of seconds to sink against him and forget, to feel his strong arms around her and remember the way things used to be between them.

_ I’m Detective Benson and this is my partner, Detective Stabler.  _

And then she pulls away. 

She breaks the moment and sends the present spiraling back. It’s Captain Benson now. And she hasn’t had a partner since Amaro left. How do you turn back time?

Olivia looks up at him, knowing the sheen of tears in her eyes is betraying her already. He could always read her like a book. She doesn’t expect tonight to be any different. 

“What happened?” she asks. 

He opens and closes his mouth a couple of times, rubbing at the back of his neck. She realizes her question is too broad. Is she asking about what happened ten years ago or what happened here with his car? 

“The explosion, your car,” she clarifies. 

He shakes his head, looking back over at the wreckage with a haunted look on his face. “Those bastards,” he mutters. “I was their intended target and they fucking missed.”

His wife. His kids.

“Was anyone hurt?”

She sees the pain pass over his face, the cracks splitting open his stoic facade. “Kathy.”

Shit, shit, shit. She’s been over here feeling sorry for herself and his wife is…

“Was she in the car?” she asks tentatively.

He shakes his head again. “She opened the door and took the brunt of the blast. She’s en route to the hospital, but...it doesn’t look good, Liv.”

“Elliot, why aren’t you with her?”

He gives her a little shrug and now she sees the sheen of tears in his eyes as the glare from the street lights hit him just right. “You know me. I feel more useful here on the scene than I would pacing the halls of the hospital. It’s my fault, after all. I blew my cover. They tracked me down.”

“Your cover? What -”

He’s giving her that look. That look he’d had on his face when Gitano was holding a gun to his head and taunting her to shoot. That look he’d had when he tried to ask her about what happened at Sealview. That look he gave her right before he walked out of their squad room and never came back. 

“There is so much you don’t know, Olivia.”

She feels the air escaping her lungs again. His cover. If he’s been under this entire time - 

“How long?” she asks, hoping he’s still able to follow her train of thought as easily as he used to. 

He shifts his weight. He can’t look at her. “About five years.”

She shakes her head as the reality of it comes crashing into her. He went under around the same time Amaro left SVU. He’d had five years to try and reach out. He chose not to. Even after news of Lewis likely found its way to him - still the radio silence. 

It explains why he isn’t in that ambulance with Kathy. If he’s been under that long, away from her, away from their family, she has a feeling he put the final nail in their marriage. In the end, he left both of them. In the end, none of it even mattered. 

“And the other five?” she asks quietly, knowing full well this isn’t the time or place for this conversation. But she asks it anyway, unable to stop herself from seeking answers to the questions that have kept her up at night for years. 

He still can’t look at her. “You know how so much time has passed and you can’t reach out? Days turn into months turn into years. I just kept waiting for the right moment. Before I knew it, I’d lost all of this time and they were asking me to go undercover. Figured I’d waited too long anyway, and you no longer had interest in hearing from me.”

What does she say to that? 

_ I almost died and all I could think about was you.  _

“I don’t know what you want me to say. I needed you and you weren’t there. I had to re-learn how to do this job without you. And I did it. I climbed my way up the ranks. I made Captain. I don’t know how Cragen did it, how he dealt with us. If my detectives pulled half of the crap we did -” she shakes her head, trailing off. “Look, we - now isn’t the time for this. Go to the hospital. Check on your  _ wife _ . I’ve got the scene. I’ll call -”

“OC. That’s my team, they’ll know - they’ll know who to go after for this.”

“Organized Crime?”

He nods. “I couldn’t handle the kids anymore. You’re a Godsend, Liv. 22 years? I don’t know how you do it. But then again, I know you. You have a gift with Special Victims. You always have. If anyone deserves to Captain that squad it’s you.”

“Elliot -”

“You’re right, sorry. Not the time. I just, I need you to know that I’m sorry. For all of it.”

She expels a heavy sigh, silently cursing at the universe for it’s messed up timing. “Go, El. We’ll touch base later.”

“That a promise?”

She swears she sees that old flicker of a smirk, that old playfulness she used to crave from him.

“I promise. Now go.”

Elliot reaches for her one last time, squeezing her hand, before turning to leave and heading to the hospital. Olivia stands back in the middle of the chaos of the scene, watching him go, still barely processing anything that just happened. 

He’s been out in the world for ten years living a life she knows nothing about. Meanwhile, she’s been here all along, right where he left her. She has no idea what’s about to happen now. 

What do you do when your ghost becomes a real person again? 


End file.
